Minolta Honeycomb Metering?

[v_roma]

Hi everyone,

I'm thinking of picking up a Minolta SLR and was hoping I could get some thoughts on Minolta's honeycomb metering. I've tried searching online and all I can find are statements to the effect of "it will handle most situations" but not a lot of information on which specific situations it does not handle well I guess, to get to the point, is the metering good enough for the usual tricky situations, like backlit subjects, snow/beach, etc. or do am I better off switching to spot metering?

Thank you very much!

 

[Chan Tran]

It is similar to Nikon Matrix or Canon Evaluative metering system. It uses multi point sensor that arrange in a honeycomb pattern. The algorithm to determine exposure like Nikon Matrix and Canon Evaluative is not made public. So one can not really tell by reading specs that what it can do. It's supposed to help in those tricky situation but not perfect. You could experiment with it and see what you get. Spot metering is certainly a good choice.

 

[narsuitus]

Honeycomb Pattern metering, Matrix Metering, Evaluative Metering, Multiple Zone Averaging metering, Multiple Pattern Averaging metering, Multi-Segmented metering are all names used by different manufacturers to describe a metering pattern that analyzes multiple readings from different portions of a scene in order to determine the correct exposure.

I have found that this type of metering pattern handles most of my lighting situations better than any of the other metering patterns (averaging, spot, center partial, center-weighted averaging, bottom weighted averaging, or multiple spot averaging).

One of the few times I have found it necessary to switch is when I am shooting an available light stage performance. A spot-metering pattern does a better job for me when I am trying to determine the proper exposure for a spot lit performer against a black background.

 

[sage]

If you have a Maxxum7 you can actually see the different zones it uses and their metering right on the display to give you an idea of how its calculated.